LOS ANGELES — City of Hope® Research Spotlight offers a glimpse into groundbreaking scientific and clinical discoveries advancing lifesaving cures for patients with cancer, diabetes and other chronic, life-threatening diseases. Each spotlight features research-related news, such as recognitions, collaborations and the latest research defining the future of medical treatment. This roundup highlights two innovative clinical trials for promising cancer treatments, a potential liquid biopsy for gastric cancer, new insights into how to boost immune system ...

In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a team of scientists from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Fragmentix, University of Waterloo (UW), and Technische Universität Wien (TU) have successfully demonstrated a more practical and robust method for quantum key distribution, a breakthrough that could soon lead to more secure and cost-effective communication networks worldwide.   Imagine sharing secrets today that will stay safe – even from the most powerful quantum computers of tomorrow. That’s the promise of quantum key distribution (QKD), a method that uses the principles ...

Washington, D.C. — A new study in the journal Microbiology Spectrum highlights the potential of using a natural compound from maple to combat the bacteria responsible for tooth decay: Streptococcus mutans. The compound, epicatechin gallate, is a powerful and safe alternative to traditional plaque-fighting agents. Its natural abundance, affordability and lack of toxicity make it especially promising for inclusion in oral care products such as mouthwashes, offering a safer option for young children, who often accidentally swallow mouthwash. The new study emerged as an offshoot of research into natural compounds that ...

AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 7, 2025) – The first paper from a multi-year clinical research study has been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases: Dynamics of Endemic Virus Re-emergence in Children in the USA Following the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022-2023): A Longitudinal Immunoepidemiologic Surveillance Study and demonstrates how the approach can improve modeling to better predict future outbreaks. The paper shares findings from a multicenter clinical research study, one of many studies that are part of the recently launched PREMISE (Pandemic Response Repository through Microbial and Immune Surveillance ...

A new framework for diagnosis The 2024 European clinical practice guidelines introduce a pivotal terminology shift, replacing NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) with MASLD (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease) and NASH with MASH (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis). This renaming is not just semantic—it provides a pathophysiologically grounded, inclusive classification system based on the presence of hepatic steatosis and at least one cardiometabolic risk factor. Importantly, MASLD is now grouped ...

Background and objectives The incidence of early-onset pancreatic cancer (EOPC) is rising, yet optimal treatment strategies remain unclear. While adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) has shown survival benefits in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, its specific role in EOPC patients following neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) and surgery remains underexplored. This study aimed to assess the clinical benefit of ACT in EOPC patients after NACT. Methods This retrospective cohort study analyzed pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients from the SEER database (2006–2019) who received NACT followed by curative resection. Propensity ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study combines eye tracking and artificial intelligence to identify the exact moments in an educational video that matter for learning in children.   The study could also predict how much children understood from the video based on their eye movements while they were watching it.   The research is preliminary, but it provides promise for some exciting breakthroughs in video education, said Jason Coronel, lead author of the study and associate professor of communication at The Ohio State University.   “Our ultimate goal is to build ...

What are the limits of quantum physics? This is a question that has been researched around the world for decades. If we want to make the properties of the quantum world technically usable, we need to understand whether objects that are significantly larger than atoms and molecules can also exhibit quantum phenomena. For example, small glass spheres with a diameter of one hundred nanometres can be examined – still over a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand, but huge by quantum standards. For years, attempts have been made to show the extent to which such spheres ...

SuperAgers are adults over age 80 who have the memory capacity of individuals who are at least three decades younger  SuperAgers are highly social and have brains that resist the buildup of Alzheimer’s-related plaques and tangles Research could lead to new strategies to delay, prevent dementia due to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal degeneration CHICAGO --- For 25 years, scientists at Northwestern Medicine have been studying individuals aged 80 and older — dubbed “SuperAgers” — to ...

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and despite advancements in diagnosis and treatment, it continues to impose a significant health burden globally. Researchers have now started exploring various innovative methods, such as engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) that can enable targeted drug delivery to cancer cells. While promising, the in vivo behavior of pH-responsive ENMs, which continuously interact with body fluids once administered, remains poorly understood.   To address ...

Bethesda, MD (Aug. 1, 2025) – Despite social media helping to increase awareness of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) among the public (81% of health care providers agree) and advancements in treatment over the past decade, IBS symptoms continue to significantly impact patients' daily lives and productivity, according to a new survey released by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), in partnership with The Harris Poll, a Stagwell (STGW) agency. The AGA IBS in America survey reveals compelling new insights that explore shifts in patient experiences, health care provider perceptions, and the treatment landscape for IBS from a similar study conducted in 2015. The 2024 comprehensive ...

Japanese rice fish, known as medaka, are small, easy to breed, and reproduce daily, making them widely used as model organisms around the world. Until now, medaka research has mainly occurred in labs where environmental conditions and study observations are easily controlled. Unnatural environmental settings such as these bring into question the accuracy of previous behavioral findings. Therefore, this study is important for answering the fundamental question of whether the behavior of animals observed in laboratories is the same as in their natural environments. A ...

Chemistry and physics are combining forces at Columbia, and it’s leaving everyone frustrated—in a good way. New work, published today in Nature Physics, describes a new two-dimensional material capable of complex quantum behaviors that arise from its underlying chemistry, rather than its atomic structure.  “It’s a classic Columbia story—multiple groups in physics and chemistry came together to work on this new material, and we found exciting new results about how electrons move,” said Aravind Devarakonda, an applied physicist at Columbia Engineering.  The material, Pd5AlI2, ...

426,016. That’s how many packages of illegal medicines EU agencies confiscated during an eight-month operation in 2024. During the operation, they managed to find counterfeit medicines worth 11.1 million euros. And it’s an increasingly bigger problem. “Pharmaceutical crime is a growing threat in the EU,” Europol stated earlier this year. Fortunately, a new weapon against pharmaceutical counterfeiting may be on the way. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Stanford University have shown in a new study that it is possible to distinguish seemingly identical medicines at the molecular level – both across ...

Many animals, including humans, can flexibly modulate their responsiveness to sounds according to different situations. This ability allows them to optimize the use of their limited brain resources by prioritizing the processing of critical information at any given moment. In line with this idea, a research team at Nagoya University in Japan has demonstrated that when female fruit flies are eager to mate, dopaminergic signals can influence their sensitivity to sounds, including courtship sounds from males, which are an essential source of information for species reproduction. "We believe that this finding is the first step toward understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie ...

Large ocean animals can be protected throughout much of their lifecycle by huge Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), new research shows. Scientists tracked sea turtles, manta rays and seabirds – all of which travel far and wide to forage, breed and migrate – in the Chagos Archipelago MPA in the Indian Ocean. In total, 95% of tracking locations were recorded inside the MPA’s 640,000 square kilometre area – suggesting it is large enough to protect these wandering animals. The study – by a team including Exeter and Heriot-Watt universities and ZSL – also assessed the impact of a smaller 100,000 square kilometre MPA and found seabirds would be less well protected ...

Up to 60% of women experience some fear about giving birth, especially for the first time, but a new study shows why some women are more likely to stay calm and confident in the lead-up to childbirth. In a global first, researchers from Robert Gordon University in Scotland and the University of South Australia (UniSA) investigated the factors that help ease childbirth fears, rather than stoke them. They surveyed 88 pregnant women in their third trimester before attending antenatal classes in north-east ...

Link to video and sound (details below): https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/YDQA0P5cJ7 New study links 2023 Maui wildfire to spike in suicide, overdose Deaths by suicide and drug overdose significantly increased in the aftermath of the August 2023 Maui wildfire, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study, led by Alex Ortega, dean of the Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health, and Keawe‘aimoku Kaholokula, chair of the Department of ...

Niigata, Japan – A group led by the Department of Cell Biology at the Kidney Research Center, Niigata University revealed that elevated activity of cdc42 is a critical initiation event leading to proteinuria, and proposed that suppression of cdc42 activity could be a promising therapy for nephrotic syndrome. Glomerulus is a filtration unit of the kidney, and the glomerular capillary wall functions as a barrier, preventing the leak of plasma protein into urine. Proteinuria is a clinical symptom showing dysfunction of the barrier of glomerular capillary wall, and is an aggravating factor leading to kidney failure. Besides, ...

Sophia Antipolis, France: Analysis of over 36,000 people with high blood pressure has shown that taking more steps, even below the recommended daily target of 10,000 steps, and walking faster, is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of major problems of the heart and blood vessels.  The study, published today (Thursday) in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that compared to a daily step count of 2,300 steps, every extra 1,000 steps was linked to a 17% reduction in the risk of developing a major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE), up to 10,000 steps. Additional ...

In a discovery that could broaden access to next-generation biologic medicines and vaccines, researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have engineered polymer-based nanoparticles that form with a simple temperature shift—no harsh chemicals, no specialized equipment, and no processing needed.  The new nanoparticles, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, self-assemble at room-temperature in water and, because of these gentle conditions, can deliver proteins, which are unstable in many existing nanoparticle ...

If you’ve interacted with an artificial intelligence chatbot, you’ve likely realized that all AI models are biased. They were trained on enormous corpuses of unruly data and refined through human instructions and testing. Bias can seep in anywhere. Yet how a system’s biases can affect users is less clear. So a University of Washington study put it to the test. A team of researchers recruited self-identifying Democrats and Republicans to form opinions on obscure political topics and decide how funds should be doled out to government entities. For help, they were ...

Embargoed for release: Wednesday, August 6, 6:30 PM ET Key points: In a study that tracked the diets of more than 205,000 adults over decades, three servings weekly of French fries was associated with a 20% excess risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D). There was no significant association between consumption of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes and risk of diabetes. However, swapping any form of potatoes for whole grains was estimated to lower T2D risk. The study offers the most comprehensive findings on potatoes and T2D risk to date. Prior studies have ...

Eating three servings of French fries a week is associated with a 20% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but eating similar amounts of potatoes cooked in other ways - boiled, baked or mashed - does not substantially increase the risk, finds a study published by The BMJ today.  What’s more, replacing any form of potatoes with whole grains was associated with a lower type 2 diabetes risk, but swapping them for white rice was linked to an increased risk, the results show. Potatoes contain several nutrients including fibre, vitamin C, and magnesium, but they also have a high starch content and therefore a high glycemic index, so have been linked to a ...

Experts are calling for a global effort to identify “positive tipping points” to accelerate the green transition – and have devised a method to find them. A tipping point is a threshold where a small change can trigger a significant, often irreversible, transformation. With climate change becoming increasingly damaging and dangerous, positive tipping points in human societies and economies can spark rapid reductions in emissions and other environmental harm. Positive tipping points are already happening – with solar power and electric vehicles rapidly displacing fossil-fuelled alternatives – but many more are needed to ensure a thriving, sustainable ...